The ongoing inquest into the tragic death of Noah Donohoe has heard significant testimony this week, as a PSNI officer admitted to missing the 14-year-old on two separate CCTV cameras during the initial search operation. Noah, a well-known pupil at St Malachy’s College, was found in a storm drain in North Belfast in June 2020, six days after he was reported missing while cycling to meet friends.
On Wednesday, jurors at Belfast Coroner’s Court heard from PSNI Constable Day, who was tasked with reviewing CCTV footage on the Monday following Noah’s disappearance. The officer confirmed that he missed sightings of Noah at both the Grove Leisure Centre and Melville Morgan Funeral directors on York Road—locations situated just half a mile from where Noah’s body was eventually discovered on June 27.
The court was told that the officer was working within a narrow 35-minute window before being redeployed to another emergency call. During this time, he and a colleague attempted to track Noah’s journey by viewing footage from multiple locations. When questioned by Brenda Campbell KC, representing Noah’s mother Fiona Donohoe, the officer admitted that the footage was "fast-forwarded" to save time and agreed that he had missed Noah on both sets of cameras.
While the officer denied suggestions that he was not paying the "greatest level of attention," he acknowledged that checking the time difference between camera logs and real-time is a "fundamental" part of policing. The inquest also highlighted that the first police attendance at the CCTV operating suite occurred nearly 12 hours after Noah was first reported missing, a timeline that the Donohoe family’s legal team argued was insufficient for a high-risk missing child case.
As our community continues to stand with the Donohoe family, this latest evidence provides further insight into the early stages of the search for the young North Belfast student. The inquest is expected to continue as the court seeks to establish the full circumstances surrounding the tragedy.